Regenerative agriculture: creating a lasting legacy for the countryside

Farming faces significant scrutiny around its environmental impact, the role it plays in helping to reach net zero and its connection to global food security. While the industry continues to grapple with challenges such as unpredictable weather and markets, many in the sector are rising to meet these issues head on, working innovatively to create a more sustainable, resilient and secure future.

Many definitions exist for regenerative agriculture, but all focus on the same principle – farming that aims to produce quality food while restoring and enhancing natural systems.

Conventional farming can cause the environment to deteriorate over time, while regenerative farming focuses on improving soil fertility, increasing biodiversity and sequestering carbon, ultimately promoting long-term environmental and economic stability.

The Green Farm Collective was created four years ago by a group of passionate and like-minded farmers – Jake Freestone, Michael Kavanagh, Tim Parton and Angus Gowthorpe – with the ambition to make farming great again.

By sharing their knowledge about regenerative agricultural practices, the group wants to help other farmers produce food in a way that helps improve its nutritional quality, receive a fair price and enrich the environment its grown in.

These farmers have made a commitment to restore the habitats on their farms, improving water, air and soil quality by reducing the use of pesticides, capturing carbon and enhancing biodivers

The Green Farming Collective started as a simple business idea to pivot mainstream farming practices towards more regenerative approaches. The initial premise was that carbon could be traded, bringing additional income to the farm through the private sector – in turn encouraging biodiversity within the soil. However, it wasn’t long before this idea evolved.

With weather and seasonal changes becoming increasingly challenging, arable farming has become more demanding, and selling produce profitably is getting more difficult. This prompted the question: how can we ensure farmers earn more from food that is produced using better, more sustainable methods?

From this, The Green Farming Collective developed, becoming a platform for knowledge sharing, bringing like-minded people together and empowering its members to feel comfortable to change their more conventional farming practices.

Over the past four years, the Collective community has grown. From its original four founding members, it now has an additional 40 farms, nurturing a network of British farmers who are investing in nature-enhancing projects and farming under its banner.

The founders are committed to full transparency, driven by their shared passion to counteract greenwashing in the industry. Approved members have to adopt and comply with a set of standards before they can farm or sell produce. It is useful to note that whole farms have to be inputted into the scheme.

Some of the standards are soil management, nutrient management and long-term cropping plans; plant health, biodiversity and water management policies; minimal soil disturbance; limited use of nitrogen; no treated sewage sludge to be used; use of PAS 100 certified composts and PAS 110 digestate and diverse crop rotation. For the full list of standards, visit greenfarmcollective.com/regenerativestandards.

These standards strike a balance between organic and conventional farming practices and are upheld through a combination of self-assessments and independent spot checks. Having access to affordable, nutrient-rich food that also supports environmental health is something the founders believe everyone is entitled to.

Tim Parton

CLA Staffordshire Committee member Tim Parton is one of the Green Farming Collective’s founding members. Farming 750 acres in Staffordshire, his regenerative journey started in 2009. Since then, he has minimised herbicide use and eliminated fungicides, growth regulators and insecticides, relying on natural predators. Farm yields have remained stable, while breaking its records of 12 tonnes/ha from 50kg/ ha of applied soil nitrogen.

Waterways around the farm are protected by flower-rich margins, encouraging pollinators and birds. Hedgerows and trees have been planted to offer diverse wildlife habitat, and Tim monitors bird and insect numbers to prove that what he is doing is working. “What we are doing is nothing new; it is about farming in a way to heal the planet and the population,” he says.

Growing the community and raising awareness of regenerative farming is important to the Collective, and it is encouraging everyone from farmers who have been in the industry for years, to new entrants, to take a look at the work they are doing.

For the third year in a row, it hosted its Green Farming Collective Regenerative Agriculture Conference in May. It showcased the entire regenerative process from the start and the benefits it can have for farms.

Encouraging others to invest in nature is the aim of the Collective, with soil quality improvement the most important thing that can be done to create farming resilience. But how can this be measured?

Carbon capture, natural capital and the general effects of farming practices have to be assessed to ensure that its standards are being met. Working with Trinity Agtech and using its ‘Sandy’ app, members of the Collective can track their natural capital and manage their sustainability. The trading of carbon also takes place through Trinity Natural Capital Markets and private agreements.

The Collective soon hopes to offer two biodiversity investment options, available as annual agreements sold in units of 3m². The first involves environmentally sensitive broadacre farmland, managed sustainably to promote soil health, the second focuses on enhanced biodiversity features such as field margins, hedgerows, trees, ponds and wildflower habitats. This can equate to Biodiversity Net Gain, which they believe will be a substantial income for farmers moving forward.

Carbon investment opportunities will also be made available for purchase annually, sold by the tonne and sourced directly from named Collective farms.

These investments will support the verified on-farm standards aimed at capturing and storing carbon, helping to slow down climate change and promote sustainability.

Specific environmentally beneficial projects will also be available to invest in through crowdfunding, which will include wildlife and habitat creation or enhanced public engagement and education facilities.

Jake Freestone

CLA member Jake Freestone is Farm Manager at Overbury Farms, and a founding member of the Collective. The watercourses around Overbury Farms, which covers around 3,800 acres on the Worcestershire/Gloucestershire border, have been protected from fertiliser and pesticide drift with wildflower margins, attracting a range of pollinators and insects. Grassland has been planted with clover and grass to provide grazing for sheep in the summer, and cultivated field margins around the farm have been pesticide and fertiliser-free for 10 years to support wildflower germination.

The most notable success of the Collective its own brand of regeneratively farmed, premium wheat flour, Regen Flour, in partnership with Eurostar Commodities.

There are two varieties available - all-purpose and strong white - both of which are made from 100% certified regenerative British wheat grown on farms that are committed to whole-farm regenerative practices through the Green Farming Collective standards.

The hope is that this will evolve into a range of regenerative products such as oats, malt barley, lamb, beef and wool. There is a belief that these products should have a premium attached, allowing farmers to receive a fair price.